


I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotion

by lubilu17



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: But we’re here anyway, Gay Will Byers, Mike has a mini existential crisis, Tbh I’m not entirely sure where this came from, mike just wants everything to go back to normal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 22:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13222647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lubilu17/pseuds/lubilu17
Summary: There’s all of those emotions that we can’t put names to, that make us feel things that we can’t name.A bunch of one shots about the stranger things characters feeling things.





	I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotion

**Author's Note:**

> I legit have no idea where this came from but here we are. Enjoy. X

_**Sonder** \- The realisation that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own._

 

* * *

 

It’s only after El comes back from what seems like the dead when Mike realised how he’s been acting since she went missing. It’s only now he begins to recognise the startled look on his mother’s face when he offers to help out with things around the house, when he actively begins to tell her the new plots to his campaigns (not that he ever did tell her these things before everything happened but he’s learnt to relish the time with his family after one of them went missing for a year, because he most definitely considers El as part of his family).

It’s only now that he begins to recognise the startled look on his friends faces when he suggests that they go out and do things together, whether it just be to go down into his basement or to the arcade. The looks that they give him leave a weight in his stomach as he realises that over the past year he’s not really paid much attention to any of his friends, preferring to just sit in the fort in his basement and try to communicate with El.

He wants to think that they’re just surprised that he’s offering to do things now rather than just passively agreeing to things that others have suggested. He wants to think that they’ll treat him the same as they see to do, even after everything he said to Max in the beginning and how he just brushed off Dustin and Lucas. He wants to believe that everything will go back to normal, just with two new party members. He wants to believe that they’ll all have time for him again, because that’s how to used to be. They would always make time for him if he wanted it. And he would do the same for them. At least that’s what he wanted to believe.

It all came to a head when he called Lucas one day, asking if he was able to go round after school the following day because his mother was visiting a ‘friend’ and Nancy would be at Jonathan’s. It had surprised him when Lucas had said that he was busy and had a life outside the party so he’d have to ask Dustin or Will. It had supposed him as Lucas had always had time for him however busy his parents wanted him to be, he would always put down whatever he was doing and make time for Mike. That’s just what friends do. Right?

But what Lucas had said got stuck in Mike’s head. That he had a life outside the party. Of course Mike knew in theory that all of them had life outside the party. That they all had family that the others would never meet, that they all did things with their parents that no one else in the group would do with theirs, that they all did different things when they weren’t together. He knew that Lucas would go to church almost every week with his parents. He knew that Dustin and his mother always curled up on the couch together after dinner to watch a specific game show that Mike could never remember the name of. He knew that Will would always sit at their table drawing whilst his mother cooked their dinner, just talking about their days. He knew that all of his friends led separate lives, but the idea that they were all happening at the same time just struck him. That they weren’t all on standby waiting for him to call them to arms.

He ended up not going anywhere the next night, opting to lay on his bed and wonder about his friends and families lives. What his mother was doing at this moment with her ‘friend’. What his sister was doing with Jonathon (though to be honest he doesn’t particularly want to imagine that one in too much detail). What El and Hopper were doing in their cabin in the woods. What Mr Clarke was doing outside of school. What the man with the weird hat at the grocery store that he’d seen a couple of days ago was doing at the moment, whether he had a family, how many friends he had, whether he was happy.

He knew his mother was hiding as secret from them, his friends when he told them just said that she was having an affair. But the idea that she was holding a secret like he had done for the past year, he just couldn’t put the feeling into words.

He knew that Will was keeping something from them all, but just the idea of Will feeling the need to hold something back from them all made the weight in his stomach grow heavier. That Will had thoughts and feeling just like Mike and he was the only one to be able to feel them.

He didn’t even want to imagine the memories, the complexities of El’s life, knowing that it would just make him feel even worse. Knowing that someone had gone through much pain made his heart lurch at the thought.

Even as he could hear Nancy’s sobs through their shared wall at night he didn’t want to imagine the pain of having a best friend who didn’t come back from the dead. He didn’t want to imagine the paid he would have felt if Will had actually died, the pain that Nancy actually had to deal with.

He didn’t want to think that everyone else had their own lives outside what he knew, outside of school, outside of D&D campaigns, outside of attempting to save the world. He didn’t want to think that all of his friends, all of his family felt pain like him, felt joy just as he did, felt anger as he felt anger. He didn’t want to think about how everybody else’s life is just as complicated and complex as his own, it just makes his head hurt trying to think how everybody he knows is doing something different, seeing the same experiences through different points of view, all at the same time.

He didn’t want to think that someone, somewhere, could be experimenting on more children, could be setting up the end of the world again.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp I hope you enjoyed it


End file.
